SpaceX satellite wins test Pentagon’s commitment to competition

The U.S. Space Force recently awarded two of its biggest satellite contracts to SpaceX, strengthening the company’s position in the military’s next generation space networks. The awards, worth nearly $6.5 billion, put SpaceX at the forefront of efforts to build a global military surveillance network and a space-based communications backbone for missile defense. They are also raising questions about whether procurements of this scale should be concentrated with a single supplier. One contract worth $4.16 billion will fund a constellation of satellites known as AMTI, or airborne moving target indicator, a capability sought by the Pentagon as an alternative to aircraft-based surveillance. The other is a $2.29 billion award for the Space Data Network, a space-based communications backbone designed to move data among sensors, command systems and interceptor weapons. Both contracts were announced within days of each other in late May. These procurements come at a pivotal moment for the space industrial base. The Pentagon is seeking to expand military space capabilities while simultaneously urging industry to invest in manufacturing capacity and scale production. The Pentagon’s efforts to create a competitive market for proliferated military satellites is running into rising operational urgency, resulting in an increased reliance on one company that has mastered industrial-scale production. Policymakers and observers worry those objectives could become difficult to reconcile if major programs gravitate toward a single supplier. “We’re lucky to have a dynamic space industrial base, but it is still fragile, and continuing to sole source big contracts to one vendor might profoundly harm that competition and be a serious mistake for our long-term interest,” Sen. Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said during a recent Department of the Air Force budget hearing. He said he would be looking for evidence that the Pentagon is fostering competition through multiple providers, open architectures and opportunities for new entrants. Lawmakers generally support the military’s push to field capabilities quickly, but they have repeatedly pressed the Pentagon to increase competition in major procurements as a way to reduce costs, encourage innovation and preserve industrial capacity. SDA competitive model The Pentagon’s current approach to proliferated satellite constellations began in earnest in 2020 when the Space Development Agency launched the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, or PWSA. The effort represented one of the most significant departures from traditional military satellite procurement in decades. Instead of relying on a small number of large, expensive spacecraft, the PWSA would have hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit produced by multiple suppliers and replenished on a regular basis. The architecture was built around two primary layers. The Transport Layer was designed as a military data netw…